Time passed and Hyrondal's arm healed to the point where the healers removed the slugs and sewed the flesh shut. They bound his arm in linen and allowed Hyrondal to leave bed under the promise not to touch a sword.

Instead of meeting in Hyrondal's sick room, Thranduil, Jailil, Nimrethil, Ailunai, and Hyrondal met in the kitchen gardens on stone benches forgotten beside the mint patch and shaded by the surrounding wall at high noon.

"Anything to share?" Thranduil asked, as he lay face down in the grass near one of the benches.

"My stitching sampler earned praise from my sewing tutor," Ailunai said, and twirled her sunshade closed on the grass beside her.

"Lovely!" Hyrondal exclaimed. "Do you think you could embroider the royal guard emblem onto my tunics? Yuai gave me half a dozen new ones today."

Ailunai flicked a golden curl off her shoulder. "I think not; you have to earn the badge of the royal guard."

"True," Hyrondal mused. "I suppose it is nice enough to have new clothes; I used to wear the same ones for months."

"Disgusting," Nimrethil sniffed. She added, "I cooked the personal dinner of Lord Vinain last night. There were no complaints."

"Then you must do better and earn praise," Thranduil said.

"Oo, snippy! What happened to you today?"

"Council meetings," Thranduil groaned. "Fuss about humans cutting down trees near the northern border of Mirkwood."

"I suppose they must build houses and fires somehow," Ailunai said.

"Tell that to Oropher!" Thranduil exclaimed. He sat up. "Oropher claimed the humans are attacking the forest and dispatched scouts to—to defend Mirkwood."

"Huh!" Nimrethil said. "Old toad."

Thranduil giggled. Jailil said, "Avaron and I are harvesting moonroot today."

Thranduil raised his eyebrows. "What is moonroot?"

"There is a dell in the forest a short ride from the healer's garden," Jailil answered. "Moonroot flowers this time of year and can only be picked on the crescent moon. The healers harvest their supply for the year over the next week because moonroot is invaluable when it comes to flesh wounds."

"Moonroot tea is awfully bitter," Hyrondal said. He nodded his head. "I know. I was forced to drink buckets of it."

"Well," Jailil said, and poked Hyrondal's arm. "Is your arm healed or not?"

Hyrondal grinned and batted Jailil's hand away. "Fair point."

"Not a word about the dessert I sent to you last night, I see," Nimrethil said to Thranduil critically.

Thranduil wrinkled his nose at her. "Were you experimenting?"

"Well I never!" Nimrethil exclaimed and tossed her purple hair. "Do you care to explain yourself?"

"Why can you not send desserts to me?" Hyrondal moaned. "Yuai has me on a diet of the blandest greens an elf can cook."

"You are not grateful, Hyrondal, for one thing," Nimrethil said. "But after this ungracious attitude from Thranduil, maybe I will send you something."

"I do not see how you expect to improve if you blow up at criticism," Thranduil objected. "It was too salty is all."

"I was experimenting," Nimrethil muttered.

Jailil stood and brushed the grass off his robe. "Avaron expects me home; see you tomorrow."

Thranduil and Hyrondal grunted, but Ailunai waved and Nimrethil fluttered her pink handkerchief at him. Jailil raised his hand in a farewell and skipped down the stone path. He passed through the kitchen gardens, out into the green herbal garden's, pastoral with their blooming flowers, and went through a yellow gate to walk toward Avaron's house.

The stone mansion cast plentiful shade on the flower beds outside the house and on the path as Jailil entered the cool hall. He knew now which rooms were used and which were left to the dust as he walked to the kitchen at the back of the house. The kitchen was a rectangular room clustered with copper pots and bottles of herbs but no Avaron stood at the kitchen island counting drops of tincture into an elixir and waiting to scold him.

"Avaron?" Jailil called.

The bunches of herbs drying from the open kitchen rafters rustled and dried leaves drifted to the floor. Jailil brushed the crumbles off his dark hair and stood wondering before he went to Avaron's bedchamber. He listened at the door, but the room sounded empty.

Jailil sighed and thought Avaron must have been called to the healing ward.

"Jailil!"

Jailil turned at the sound of his name as Avaron hurried toward him. Slightly put off by the angry frown on his mentor's face, Jailil started when Avaron smacked him.

"I told you to stay away from my room!" Avaron scolded.

Jailil felt tears blister in his eyes along with the sting on his bottom. "I heard you! I would never have gone in. I thought you might be—"

"Return to your books!" Avaron snapped. "You have not finished your paper on moonroot."

Jailil clenched his hands. "You will be sorry for this!" He fled to the study and heard the door to Avaron's room slam shut.

Jailil's books lay open at the table in a corner of the study, where the window behind it cast light on Jailil's inkpot and a quill. Jailil slammed into his chair, glaring at Avaron's empty desk in front of an L-shaped bookcase opposite him.

"I said you would be sorry!" Jailil whispered as he took up his quill.

Two hours later Jailil found himself smiling over the direction his paper had taken. Distracted when Avaron burst into the study with his robe clashing around his ankles, Jailil looked up and ducked with a cry as Avaron hurled a teacup at him. It splintered against his desk.

"How dare you?" Avaron spat.

Jailil glared at the orange streaks striping Avaron's black hair and smirked. "I told you what would happen if you hit me."

Avaron made a grab at Jailil and ink splashed across the paper on his desk as Avaron's arm upended the inkpot. "When I get my hands on you, you little beast, you will not sit in comfort for days! One spank is nothing compared to what I will do to you!"

Jailil lunged around the desk and made for the door, but Avaron whirled and snatched his arm. "I cannot have an apprentice I do not trust!" He twisted Jailil's ear until the elfling shrieked. "What you did was dangerous! We are finished."

Avaron shoved Jailil down the hall, out the front door, and slammed it shut behind the elfling. Jailil scraped his elbow on a lone rock jutting out of the pathway, but he barely felt the pain as he squeezed his eyes shut to block out memories of cold corners that made his skin crawl.

No, no, no!

Jailil scrambled to his feet and ran; his friends were still in the garden when he dropped to his knees in front of Thranduil lounging on a stone bench and gasped, "I have done something terrible."

Thranduil sat up. "Terrible?"

"Terrible," Jailil cried. Ailunai's hand on his shoulder helped him tell his story without choking on his tears.

"Ha!" Nimrethil said, when Jailil fell silent and twisted his hands in his lap. "I would like to see Avaron with orange hair."

"It is an unjust world where grown elves can defend themselves but we cannot," Ailunai said.

"It was stupid!" Jailil cried. "It was just a slap."

Thranduil put a hand on Jailil's shoulder and looked down from his perch on the bench into his friend's eyes. "It was just a slap the first time Oropher spanked me and then it was two and five and ten. These things grow, Jailil."

Jailil shook of Thranduil's hand. "We do not all have an Harune, Thranduil! I would take any number of slaps if it meant I could keep learning—because eventually it would end, and I could help others stop hurting."

"Valar!" Thranduil exclaimed. "That is not healthy, Jailil. You cannot heal others if you are broken inside."

"I do not care anymore," Jailil sniffled.

Hyrondal said, "It seems to me you should apologize."

Jailil used the hem of his robe to wipe his eyes. "I know. I need your help. Even yours, Thranduil."

"Count me in!" Thranduil said.

It was past midnight when Jailil crept to Avaron's front door wearing Thranduil's cloak against the slight chill. He tried the door handle and breathed out when it turned. Jailil's heart thudded as he walked the empty halls, relived when light under Avaron's bedroom door told him the elf was still awake. Jailil knocked.

"Come in!" Avaron said.

Jailil's heart blocked out his hearing as he entered the room. Avaron sat in an armchair in the far corner of the room beside the floor-length window looking out over the garden. A mug steamed on the small table beside him.

Jailil took five steps in the room lit by candles and told himself he had to make it past the double bed. He inched forward onto the round carpet at the end of the bed and moved past the trunk between the two corner bed posters.

"What do you want?" Avaron asked. He put a frame from his lap face down on the small table.

Jailil kept his hands behind him. "I am sorry for what I did. I know it was foolish and you—you may spank me all you like; I will never do it again and I will not fight back. But please do not—please let me be your apprentice . . ." Inwardly, Jailil pinched himself. Get it together!

Avaron shifted in his armchair. A black cloth wrapped around his head, but he reached up and pulled it off and the orange color that had now spread to the ends of every tendril glowed in the candlelight.

"On this day five years ago, my wife died," Avaron said. "She went into labor with our child and a careless apprentice gave her the wrong medicine. She lost the baby too. What you put in my tea was not dangerous on its own, Jailil, but you do not know what else I drink or eat that may wrongfully mingle with your herb and turn into poison."

Jailil's knees trembled and he surprised himself by not stumbling. "I am so, so sorry, Avaron. I did not know today was a day of grieving for you or I would not have bothered you. I will leave. I will not come back."

Avaron looked down at his hands in his lap and smoothed the dark purple cloth of his robe. "First, I think you owe me an apology, Jailil. Why did you do this?"

This time Jailil sank to the cool floor. He squeezed his hands in his lap. "I know it was just—a slap to you—something every parent in Mirkwood does when their temper runs out—but that is not what it was to me. I have not been slapped, Avaron, I have been beaten! For asking for food or taking blankets so I would not freeze. It would be a kindness if my memory was only filled with slaps.

"But even so, you touched a personal part of my body without permission—and it is so hard for me to see grown elves fight back when they are attacked and do nothing—when someone hurts me."

Avaron's black eyes bored into Jailil's yellow ones. "But you said you were willing to take a spanking as punishment."

Jailil bit his lip. "I am not really—but I have to choose between—between a little bit of hurt and my dream and . . . do you want to . . . to spank me?"

"Maybe," Avaron said.

The indifference in Avaron's voice twanged Jailil's heart. He turned around and jerked down his robe, no longer caring if he tore the precious cloth. "Look, see why I did not want to bathe in front of you! See the scars—constant reminders of what people have done to me for no good reason save the fact that they can! Maybe you do not care about slaps that soon faded, but I do, and I do not want to learn from a healer who hurts people."

Jailil tugged his robe back up until the collar touched his neck and jumped to his feet. He upset the basket on the floor behind him and looking at the blind hope in the basket's contents turned the room red. He grabbed the basket and drew his arm back.

"No!" Avaron said. "You have to be better then me."

Tears blurred the room as Jailil dropped the basket. Ashamed of the drops sliding down his cheeks, he bit his lip.

"I think," Avaron said, "That we are both hurting today. I think you should go—"

Jailil's feet carried him toward the door as he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his robe. "I will."

Avaron grabbed his arm. Jailil whirled and bared his teeth. Avaron loosened his hold and explained, "What I was trying to say is I think you should go eat. An empty belly is not good for the mind."

Jailil stared at Avaron's eyes before he scuttled out of the room to the warm soup bubbling on the back of the cookstove. It occurred to him Avaron must have sat up to keep an eye on it since it was now past midnight.

When Avaron joined him, Jailil kept his eyes on the steam curling out of his bowl. Avaron slid a tin across the table to Jailil and said, "Thank you for harvesting moonroot."

"My friends helped," Jailil answered. "I made sure they knew how to pick it."

"Moonroot turns black if it is picked poorly," Avaron said absently.

"What is in the tin?"

"If you rub it into your back every night, the scars will fade," Avaron answered.

Jailil unscrewed the tin and touched the creamy smooth surface of the white salve inside. "I do not think all things can fade."

"Maybe not," Avaron said. "But we do not know unless we try."

Jailil hesitated. "Um, did I—did I almost poison you?"

Avaron chuckled. "No, Jailil. Redweed is a harmless plant; you cannot mix it with anything to make it toxic. You knew that."

"I was not trying to hurt you," Jailil murmured.

"Which is less then I can say for myself, so let us both make an effort not to repeat the sadness of today. Trust what you know, Jailil, even if I tell you otherwise."

Jailil screwed shut the tin and rubbed his eyes. He blinked to clear his vision before he nodded goodnight to his mentor and went to sleep, thinking he had to mend the tears in his robe in the morning, yet he did not awaken until noon.

Thank y'all for reading! I love hearing from you.

Next Chapter: Hyrondal attempts to subsist on 'dry bread and water', so to speak.